EIGHTEENTH EVENING.
Père Bastien, observing that Joseph listened with great attention, continued as follows:—
"Music has two modes which the learned, as I have heard tell, call major and minor, but which I call the clear mode and the troubled mode; or, if you like it better, the blue-sky mode and the gray-sky mode, or, still otherwise, the mode of strength and joy, and the mode of dreaminess and gloom. You may search till morning and you will find no end to the contrasts between the two modes; but you will never find a third, for all things on this earth are light or darkness, rest or action. Now listen to me, Joseph! The plains sing in the major, and the mountains in the minor mode. If you had stayed in your own country your ideas would belong to the clear and tranquil mode; in returning: there now, you ought to see the use that a soul like yours could make of that mode; for the one mode is neither less nor more than the other. But while you lived at home, feeling yourself a thorough musician, you fretted at not hearing the minor sound in your ears. The fiddlers and the singing-girls of your parts only acquire it; for song is like the wind which blows everywhere and carries the seeds of plants from one horizon to another. But inasmuch as nature has not made your people dreamy and passionate, they make a poor use of the minor mode, and corrupt it by that use. That is why you thought your bagpipes were always false. Now, if you want to understand the minor, go seek it in wild and desolate places, and learn that many a tear must be shed before you can duly use a mode which was given to man to utter his griefs, or, at any rate, to sigh his love."
Joseph understood Père Bastien so well that he asked him to play the last air he had composed, so as to give us a specimen of the sad gray mode which he called the minor.
"There, there!" cried the old man; "so you overheard the air I have been trying for the last week to put to certain words. I thought I was singing to myself; but, as you were listening, here it is, such as I expect to leave it."
Lifting his bagpipe he removed the chanter, on which he softly played an air which, though it was not melancholy, brought memories of the past and a sense of longing after many things to the consciousness of those who listened.
Joseph was evidently not at ease, and Brulette, who listened without stirring, seemed to waken from a dream when it ended.
"And the words," said Thérence, "are they sad too, father?"
"The words," said he, "are, like the air, rather confused and demand reflection. They tell the story of how three lovers courted a girl."